Actor released on bail in Georgia faces at least 8 years in prison on drug charges

Actor Giorgi Gior­ganashvili who had been detained on drug charges, was released on bail on 14 July, after tens of pro­test­ers rallied in his support the previous day.

Tbilisi City Court released Giorganashvili’s on ₾20,000 ($8,400) bail. He claims he was illegally kept in custody for more than five months as ‘the police planted drugs on him’.

Gior­ganashvili, also known as Bakhala, was arrested on 29 January 2017 for ‘pos­sess­ing buprenor­phine’, an opioid used to treat opioid addiction, while trav­el­ling from western Georgia to Tbilisi.

The actor faces from 8–20 years in prison or a life sentence.

Gior­ganashvili has pleaded innocent, accusing the police of planting the drugs on him.

A rally to support Gior­ganashvili was held on 13 July in Tbilisi’s Dedaena Park, where sup­port­ers urged author­i­ties to change leg­is­la­tion and decrim­i­nalise drug pos­ses­sion.

Searches without witnesses

Drug policy activists have claimed that a rule allowing courts to place a person in jail after hearing tes­ti­monies only from police, without requiring a third party to be present during the search, has to be amended.

‘As in many cases in recent months, the only witnesses [of Giorganashvili’s drug-exam­i­na­tion] are police officers. After detaining Bakhala, they examined him at a place with no cameras and despite Giorgi’s demand to have a third party witness during the exam­i­na­tion, they were the only ones who were present’, the organ­is­ers of the rally, White Noise Movement, a group of inde­pen­dent drug policy activists, said on 13 July.

On 6 June, a rap duo were arrested in Tbilisi and charged with illegally pur­chas­ing and holding espe­cial­ly large amounts of the recre­ation­al psy­choac­tive drug MDMA. They claimed that the drugs were planted on them, and that they were arrested for a recent music video they released depicting a police officer as a dog. The police officials have denied the claim.

After wide­spread public backlash, Tbilisi CIty Court released them on bail, but the charges have not been dropped and the duo may still face life impris­on­ment.

As an alter­na­tive to what they describe as ‘draconial drug policy’, local rights organ­i­sa­tions have proposed a bill to decrim­i­nalise pos­ses­sion of all drugs. The bill, was developed by Tbilisi-based advocacy group the National Drug Policy Platform, which consists of over 40 NGOs, and has been put before Georgia’s Par­lia­ment by the Par­lia­men­tary Health Committee. The core principle of the changes would be to move the country’s drug policy away from a criminal justice approach, treating drug use instead as a public health issue. The par­lia­ment is likely to consider the bill during the autumn plenary sessions.